Trump Says Coronavirus Testing Makes USA Look Bad; and a Florida Data Scientist Who Was Fired Creates Her Own Coronavirus Dashboard
On Monday, President Donald Trump said there was an easy way to have fewer coronavirus cases in the United States. All we need to do is stop testing.
“If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, actually,” said Trump during a roundtable event for seniors.
Last month, Trump made similar claims during a meeting with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.
“So, the media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do, by far, the most testing. If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.”
“For instance, they would say we have more than China. I don’t think so. We have more than other countries. I don’t think so. But, by doing all of the testing we’re going to have more cases because we do more testing. Otherwise, you don’t know if you have a case. I think that’s a correct statement,” Trump added.
In March, Trump told Fox News that he didn’t want infected patients to disembark from a cruise ship because it would also increase the number of reported cases.
“I like the numbers being where they are,” Trump said at the time. “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”
Related: Prosecutor Says She Hopes Coronavirus ‘Spreads in Riots’
Last month, Rebekah Jones was fired from her job. She worked at the Florida Department of Health, where she worked to create a data portal. The portal was created to keep track of the state’s COVID-19 cases.
Jones’ original dashboard seemed to clash with what the state wanted the public to know. When a superior asked her to alter the data, she refused. As a result, she was let go.
“When I went to show them what the report card would say for each county, among other things, they asked me to delete the report card because it showed that no counties, pretty much, were ready for reopening,” said Jones. “And they didn’t want to draw attention to that.”
The data she was asked to alter would have changed the state’s coronavirus positivity rating from 18% to 10%. This would help the state meet its target to reopen.
“To me, it did not read like some kind of political conspiracy or some higher directive,” Jones says. “It seemed like people who expected when I brought in those results, the results to support the plan they had written, and they did not, they seemed panicked, and like they had to figure out a way to make the results match the plan.”
Now that Jones is a private citizen, she takes issue with how the state is calculating its current coronavirus positivity rate. She says the figures are misleading.
“I actually wrote the script to create that data, so I know exactly what it looks like,” said Jones.
“They’re adding their total test figures instead of their total people, which makes their percent positive extremely low,” she says.
As a result, she has created a new portal that includes a few key differences from what the official state portal shows. For example, Jones’ dashboard has a map that shows which Florida counties are safe to reopen. By her calculations, only two of the state’s 67 counties currently meet that goal.
In other words, if Florida residents want to get out, they might want more protection than tinted spf moisturizer.
Related: Florida Removes Top COVID-19 Scientist for Refusing to Manipulate Data
